I first noticed Hollywood’s newest faith in last Friday’s Daily Variety, in a story by Mike Fleming about a talent agency’s new role as matchmaker for Madison Avenue: “ICM gets into brand biz”

One of the Big Five talent agencies, ICM, had just launched “a global branded entertainment division,” and hired The Weinstein Company‘s Lori Sale to run it.

“ICM will not represent brands, but the agency will work with them, creating matches for the talent and intellectual property which the agency does rep,” Sale said. “We will be agnostic, working with any brand, its talent agency or media-placement agency that represents it.”

Then it happened again today, when the former head of the WB network, Jordan Levin, announced his new venture, Generate – a content development company for TV, film and new media.

“We’re trying to apply a platform-agnostic approach,” he said. “We’ll hear the idea first and then decide if it’s better suited for broadband, mobile, TV or movies.”

Seized by agnostiphobia, I whirled around only to see that, yes, advertising has a new-found quasi-religious skepticism about media, too.

Do I bring this all up to, William Safire-like, rail agains the misuse of “agnosticism” and demand that media types start using the more, fitting and more apt “impartiality”?

Please. Long ago, we Fishbowlers wrote off any chances that Tinstletown might adopt correct usage when it comes to language. (These are the people who gave us “ankled” after all.)

No; we mention this agency agnosticism to explore what it means when a talent agency decides to get into representing the interests of brands while simultaneously representing the interests of talent. The two interests are not necessarily at loggerheads, but are they certainly aren’t always aligned.

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Otis Chandler, former LAT publisher and the last member of the Chandler dynasty to play a central role at the paper, died this morning in Ojai of Lewy body disease, a Parkinson’s-like brain disorder. He was 78.

We know that none of our Los Angeles readership has actual office jobs, which is why we haven’t mentioned anything about OfficePirates.com, the odd and almost-clever attempt by Time, Inc. to establish a young-male post-college humor website. We like the name, though. Maybe they’ll launch a Los Angeles companion site. Yogapirates.com? MillingAroundTraderJoesPirates.com? TVWritersOnHiatusPirates.com? Register all of these domains now, because ‘pirates’ is the new hot media suffix.

Projected costs for Lionsgate’s Oscar campaign for ‘Crash’: $2 million
Projected revenue boost if ‘Crash’ wins an Oscar or two: $10 million

Estimated cost, in total, of the entertainment and media-sponsored Oscar parties around town: $150 million

The point being, the Oscars aren’t really about the Oscars.

We’ve never done this before, but we’ve also never read anything like this before. Today’s LAT coverage is all about one article, the profile of writer Kate Braverman, whom we have apparently all failed. Some quotes about Kate Braverman, from noted Kate Braverman expert Kate Braverman:

- “I’m not just another writer. I don’t think people understand my relationship with this city, and they don’t understand what I’ve achieved.”

- “There is not another woman writer in Southern California who sits between Bellow and Conrad next to Hemingway and Kafka. I have the most literary stature, certainly, of any woman in Southern California.”

- “I am in the canon. Those other people will never be in the canon.”

- “What has made my life in Los Angeles untenable, and made me have to leave Los Angeles, is that I am treated as a non-person in this city.”

- “I’m the best-kept secret in L.A.”

The federal court in Virginia has just ruled, and the news is bad – not instantaneously, cataclysmically bad, but bad.

Gulp.

Reuters reports that

“U.S. District Judge James Spencer said there was no escaping that RIM had been found to be infringing on NTP Inc.’s patents and he would issue a decision on an injunction “as soon as reasonably possible.”

And to think, the Homing Pigeon is extinct.

Someone was going to try something like this eventually, but I didn’t think it would be like this: in an attempt to prevent DVR owners from skipping over its new commercial, KFC is including a secret code which can only be seen if you play the spot in slo-mo, and which will allow you to obtain a coupon for a sandwich.

Here’s the thing: most people who own TiVos or other DVRs = upscale or upscale-aspiring urban types. Most people who will go out of their way to get a 99-cent fast food item for free = not.

The federal hearing is scheduled for today, and bad day in court for Research in Motion will lead to the shutdown of BlackBerry devices throughout in Hollywood.

CNET and the New York Post both have stories.

Though CNET observes that “an injunction would prevent the sale of RIM’s primary source of revenue in its largest market, effectively crippling the company” it misses the larger point here in Hollywood: Just how is this town going to function?

We have an admonition for the assistants of Hollywood’s agencies: Prepare thee thy buckslips and Keds, because you’re going to be doing a hell of a lot of running around if this ruling goes south.

Those limeys over at The Economist express skepticism this week at the growth prospects for American Media, the pride of Woodland Hills (actually, I have no idea if people in Woodland Hills are proud of American Media):

Collectively, American Media continues to sell millions of copies, but the numbers are contracting. The National Enquirer lost more than 20% of its circulation between 2003 and the middle of last year. Stricter industry standards for measuring circulation numbers are expected to push down reported sales further, for at least half of the group’s publications when the new numbers are released in June. On February 15th, American Media announced it would restate financial returns dating back to March of 2004.

Meanwhile, sales of the Star, American Media’s flagship publication, have been, “soft” recently, the company acknowledged, though it claimed that they have rebounded. Advertising is lagging as well. Given the magnetic quality of American Media’s mastery of low culture, what could be going wrong?

Indeed, what could be going wrong? Based on “an investigative trip to a news-stand” The Economist determines there are (gasp!) too many celebrity tabloids which all look the same– hence over-saturation and price competition. Weirdly, the article doesn’t mention the internet or cable television gossip outlets which essentially compete to fill the same niche.

Anyway, who knows. As long as AMI can hold on to its bodybuilding magazines, I’ll be a satisfied customer.

Brad Greenspan, the money person behind the launch of MySpace, is suing the directors of MySpace parent company Intermix for deliberately underselling the site to News Corp for a paltry $580 million, when in fact the company is worth in the “several billion dollar range.”

I wonder if that valuation takes into account the legal fees the site will amass when the inevitable child molestation-related civil damages suit hits.